Sega Saturn

Doom for Sega Saturn was released for the Sega Saturn video game console, published in North America and Europe by GT Interactive, on March 26, 1997. This version was a port of the Sony PlayStation version and was developed by. As such, it features maps from both Ultimate Doom and Doom II, with the extra levels and sound design of the PlayStation version.

Due to a rushed release and various problems with the Saturn console, which lacked extensive support for high-level language programming, had poor library support in its development kit, had idiosyncratic 3D graphics, and was difficult to program due to its parallel co-processor design, this port is notorious for its poor frame rate. It also lacks many of the novel features of its predecessor on the PlayStation, cut either because of hardware limitations or lack of development time.

Changes
The port lacks colored lighting and reverberation for sound effects, and the sound effects are played at a lower sample rate, causing them to sound slower and lower in pitch, a common element between several third-party Sega Saturn games. In addition, the animated fire sky that was featured in some levels was replaced with the cityscape sky texture featured in levels 12-20 of the PC version of Doom II, even in stages taking place in Hell. It is likely that this was a programming error rather than a deliberate decision.

The status bar received another redesign, which is still fairly similar to the PlayStation iteration, while the face sprites feature the original PC sprites instead of the poorly scaled sprites of the PlayStation port. As an interesting variation, the monsters throughout the game move and attack slower than other ports, while the player can attack faster. The end-of-game "Cast of Characters" sequence only runs through the monsters once before skipping back to the title screen.

Due to use of, many of the ambient music tracks were removed, causing them to repeat more often as the player progresses through levels. The fireball burst sound effect is not present, instead replaced with the rocket explosion sound. Although available in the European version, the deathmatch and cooperative multiplayer modes were not present at all in the North American version.

While nightmare spectres are present and still take twice as much damage to kill as ordinary spectres, they are not rendered differently from normal spectres and are therefore difficult to distinguish.

Problems
The game was widely noted as being a rushed port with a very inconsistent frame rate depending on how much on-screen movement is present (e.g. in larger rooms, or with many monsters on screen, the game will become choppy, and in smaller, tighter rooms with only one or so monsters present, the game's speed will be much faster). This affects the game's controls, as the marine's reaction time is lessened when the game is slower (it will take longer for a controller command to register). The frame rate is consistently lower than the PlayStation version even at its best, and has been compared unfavorably even to the Sega 32X version of the game in this respect.

The information on the back of the box also contained numerous errors. The game promises "60 levels of brutal, bloody, pulse-pounding action", when 59 are actually present; the European release amends this sentence to say "over 55 levels...". Both the European and North American versions had screenshots that were taken from the PC version of Final Doom. In addition, both releases stated the game supported 2 players via linkup; however, this feature was missing from the North American version and only present in the European version. The box for the European version however incorrectly states the game is 1 player only.

Development
Programmer Jim Bagley, upon receiving the resources from id Software, was able to create a hardware-accelerated renderer for the platform in a relatively short amount of time. However, upon review by John Carmack, this rendering engine was found unacceptable due to the hardware's quad-based affine texture scaling. Carmack demanded that the hardware graphics capabilities be avoided, forcing Bagley to undertake writing a software renderer which utilized both SH2 processor units in the system, under coordination of the central 68000 chip, to draw the screen in a manner similar to the PC game engine.

The game retains original PSX Doom resources: both the wad-file (named jimsdoom.wad in Saturn release) and the per-level MAPXXTEX.IMG files. The new graphic assets are provided on the CD as separate files in CHR and SCR format. These include:
 * a sprite-sheet for menu and status bar graphics
 * sky backgrounds
 * logos (some of the logos included on the disk are not displayed int the game)
 * backgrounds for special credits screens that can be accessed by the players by entering a secret code in the level passwords menu

Graphics formats

 * CHR is a graphic format best suited to store tile-sets, although in case of Sega Saturn it is used to store non-tiled arbitrary graphic images. A single image is stored as 3 files: CHR file containing the 8x8 pixel tiles, MAP file that defines the image using these tiles as blocks and PAL file used to translate from 8-bit indexed colors of the tiles into 16-bit rgb color space.
 * SCR is a plain raster image format with 8-bit indexed color format for pixels. The files included with the game are all 1024x512 pixels in dimensions. A PAL file accompanies every SCR file to translate from 8-bit indexed color into 16-bit rgb color space.

Tools have been developed to convert images from CHR and SCR format into conventional PNGs and back.

Japanese release
On July 11, 1997, the game was released in Japan. It includes the multiplayer features of the European release. Some of the music tracks were reordered in this release to more closely match the track order of the PlayStation version.

It was distributed in Japan by Softbank Corp under publishing license from Midway Games (because of former PlayStation conversion rights) and GT Interactive.

While rumors have persisted for years that this build was slightly more optimized than the previous North American and European releases and hence ran a bit faster, comparative analysis of the video output from the NTSC-J and NTSC-US versions of the game by DigitalFoundry commentator John Linneman found no statistical difference in frame rate.

Music
The dark ambient soundtrack composed by Aubrey Hodges for the PlayStation version is recycled for this port. However, some songs are missing, and therefore the level assignments of tracks varies widely as compared to its predecessor. The songs still present are additionally shortened versions. See the main article on the soundtrack for more information. Even though the port reuses certain tracks, a large number of tracks not used are on the disc in audio format.

Physical media
Most of the regional localizations, including a minor variant of the US box art used for a Brazilian release, have similar box art depicting a lost soul, excepting the Japanese release, which instead features the Sony PlayStation's box art. Rating and certification logos vary by region as usual, and the PAL region cover uses the black color scheme typical of PAL Saturn releases as opposed to the white scheme of the NTSC region.

As mentioned before, the NTSC and PAL releases erroneously feature screenshots from the PC version of Final Doom on the back cover; this is corrected only for the Japanese release which instead has pictures of actual gameplay in the port. The Japanese version's reverse cover also features a translation of the description that was on the back of the PlayStation box, including the infamous "Best Doom Yet" quote dubiously attributed to John Romero. Other regions utilize text specially written for this release. The multiplayer status of the game, as also previously mentioned, is erroneously reflected in either direction (supported or not supported) differently per region in some editions.

The CD-ROMs for the game vary dramatically. The US version features a dark chaotic background of hellish fire and smoke with a blazing red version of the Doom logo. The PAL release is a plain unprinted CD with minimalistic grayscale screenprinting of the logo, publisher names, and basic console and copyright information. The Japanese release features a pink-tinted printing of the PlayStation cover art on the top two-thirds of the disk, with the logo at the top in grayscale and publisher and console information in dark and unprinted bands in the bottom third.